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Forum:Early Node Capture
I want to gather some opinions on the fastest way to capture strong nodes, if anyone wants to chip in. This boils down to how you win several types of fights. Nodes can have up to 8 of the top dogs for their color. * 8 Great Drakes - this strikes me as the easiest fight (relatively speaking). Great drakes are not immune to magic or missiles, cannot see invisible units, and can be evaded with 2 moves. * 8 Great Wyrms - these fights can be tricky, particularly if a Giant Spiders is also present. While not immune to magic and unable to see invisible units, or attack flying ones, they teleport. Furthermore, the defenders always get the first turn. Anything into battle in plain view of 8 wyrms is in a regrettable situation. * 8 Sky Drakes - this team does not appear to have any weaknesses one could exploit. You need overwhelming strength to win. Eventually, a high-level, heavily-geared hero under any kind of wizard will be able to handle these battles. This is the certified, and definitely not-fast, way of getting control of the nodes and getting books and retorts without taking massive losses. I am going to hazard the guess that with Incarnation cast at the beginning gives you reliable access to these nodes at the earliest possible time. Easily cuts over 100 turns off using Summon Champion to get such a unit. Get Torin some levels and gear, and he will mow those things down. I would like to find other means besides this, though, using different wizard setups and perhaps normal units. For instance, perhaps if you build 27 Slingers, level them up somehow, and are prepared to lose some fame, you could kill the sky drakes in several massed attacks with big losses. is a huge amount of wealth and infrastructure, though. Probably come in only slightly before super-heroes, and maybe not even that. Against the other two types, there are of course flying, invisible warships. I do not know if a team of flying warships is able to outmaneuver sky drakes, though. Can they? There has been some talk of Web. Its mana cost is so low as to be problematic, and it will likely need Node Mastery. While great against a pair of drakes it would be of no use against 8 of the damn things. They will close in and wreck your army long before you could snare them. To quote MysticX, "Thoughts or suggestions?" Spearman D92-R (talk) 23:41, June 26, 2013 (UTC) :My first thought is that taking a node of that strength is a bit counter-intuitive when considering speed, or how fast, but I think you have the strategy that I would consider (besides heroes) with the flying, invisible warships. The warships have the same movement as the Sky Drakes, but they (the Sky Drakes) tend to focus on one unit at a time (kind of an obvious strategy tho) so you could us a decoy unit, maybe a Djinn (for teleporting). The thing is that you then need to obtain that Very Rare Spell, which is again counter-intuitive to taking the node fast. :The most I've encountered so far has been 5 Sky Drakes, and I used well equipped, high-level heroes. Regeneration might be useful, but you still need to survive for that to help. I don't know, the with Incarnation might be the fastest way possible. You would still need flight or an artifact with flight to allow Torin to attack the Sky Drakes, which is going to cause delays. :I'm kind of a in-game fame junkie, so I would want to be able to conquer the node and the efforts spent on this powerful a node would have allowed me to take at least 20 other nodes with less effort. MysticX2 (talk) 08:52, June 27, 2013 (UTC) ::Well, as we are talking about the capture, not about winning an encounter, then in any case Plane Shift on M/G Spirit exploit will do. But for beating it for lewt there are a few options: ::At first, FIW are a bad opinion. Even a stack full of them may simply lack enough attack to bring down more than one or two high-end monsters like Drakes and Wyrms in it's 50 turns. Just because these guys have lots of shields and HP. ::For Great Drakes and Wyrms an Death Artificer Runemaster will do with a noreq caster heros. -4 spell save items are quite cheap with this combo, and Black Sleep is a Common spell. Chaos' Disintegrate will do as well, but it's not an early spell. 11 Nature can work with Sprites, Web and Call Lighting. And, suddenly, an unreachable combat tile summoning exploit, where thou rape these 8 drakes or wyrms with something like Call Lighting or Magic Vortex, or with summoning a corresponding elemental. The price then is mana only, and your casting skill determines in how many assaults you'll get the node. Battle-summoned critters will also work versus Sky Drakes (a little though). ::As for Sky Drakes, the combo of First Strike and Berserk is working great, especially if combined with Armor Piercing. Paladins do great that way (one Elite unit with Berserk will have lots of swords, and Drake's shields will be halved. If you also Black Channel the Paladins and then cast Darkness, more powerful then. How to make Paladins fly, though. Perhaps, a book of Chaos? ::A faster alternative, but without Berserk, would be Life. You then could pump up your city to get Paladins quite a lot faster, and use Heroism or AoB to max out their level. Then, some buffs, and you're at it. It's all about mana then. Paladins have Mag Immunity, which stops Lighting Breath if Drake attacks first, and AP attacks are devastating. Twilight Sparkle the Alicorn Princess (talk) 12:29, June 27, 2013 (UTC) I don't think, there is an exploit which helps you to defeat those 3 beasts early. Wyrms are immune to Cracks Call as far as I know, and Web will fail too often in Chaos and Sorcery Nodes. Fire Elemental + Magic Vortex exploit or permanent Air Elemental exploit might sound interesting, but they require 70 mana each. Even with 11 books, you'll still need a spell skill of 42 (unless you have a strong hero), which means you have to spent 1300 mana in improving spell skill beforehand. Permanent Phantom Beast exploit is the best cheating way in my opinion, but you'll need a lot of them to kill those creatures. The best way to beat a single defender should be strong normal units advanced with Life Magic. Slingers, Pikemen, Wolf Riders and Javelineers come into my mind. Stag Beatles, Berserks and Elven Lords, if you wait a bit longer. Advancements are Heroism and Holy Weapon (+10% to Hit). If you choose 11 books, then Lion Heart (+ 3 HP, +3 attack, bow and thrown included) is your friend. If not, you'll need Warlord, and probably also Alchemy, some Chaos (Chaos Channels), Sorcery (Flight) or Nature (Web) books (plus Node mastery). Some flying Storm Giants or Gorgons with Giant Strength can also beat one of those. 14:50, June 27, 2013 (UTC) :One key is flying in either of the three cases, otherwise all you have is counter-attacking units (sacrifices). Flying Non-Corporeal helps with the Great Wyrms, but that is still best on heroes. Having Web is useful, and it can be used early enough, but it will only slow the Drakes down a turn or possibly two; the real benefit from it would be the grounding effect. :Invisible would be useless in Sorcery nodes, but you wouldn't have to worry about counter magic or dispel in node battles. You would need to remember the node bonuses, but those will apply to your units too if they are from the same realm. Movement is another key factor in Sorcery nodes, and Web would be useful to counter that...if you have Node Mastery. Air Elementals might possibly out-maneuver Sky Drakes, while Warships and Arch Angels have the same number of moves which might help in retaining initiative. :I often underestimate units like Slingers and Pikemen, but enchanted units like that often give surprising results. I like Paladins and Lionheart! I don't think you can hope to capture a node of these strengths early enough that mana would be a big deal. MysticX2 (talk) 09:22, June 28, 2013 (UTC) Thanks a lot for the responses so far. First off say hello to our friends: It is good to hear of 11-book strategies with the other colors, where it seems victories at least against the wyrms and drakes come within reach. * - Flying storm giants - that's quite a funny idea. One of these can be created at the beginning of the game for . One can raid easier locations to get the mana for a second one. Two, if my math is right, might be sufficient to kill a single great wyrm, or a great drake, in a fight (these will only have against the AP ranged attack in the node) if they achieve slightly above their average damage output. They can wait out 50 turns against wyrms, and outrun drakes, and so will be able to whittle down a node even with 8 of them. * - Invisibility or flight on a ranged normal unit instead of a storm giant - it might be sufficient. * - I am not so sure about berserk paladins unless you can increase their maneuverability somehow. Wraiths probably remain the best strategy, where for this purpose, you just use them to acquire artifacts, spells, and wealth to jumpstart heroes. * - I'm listening on using sprites. I don't know how many it would take to kill a great wyrm, but they would have no problem besieging the node if it were possible. A very early strategy, and on myrror to boot. * On that note, draconian bowmen or shamans would put on the same show. * - thinking about it, it probably wouldn't be too hard getting the skill needed for Magic Vortex. 50 turns of it would be disastrous on wyrms. * A less-legit alternative to artificer+runemaster would be 11 books, and then see if one of the enemy wizards is an artificer. Trade for Create Artifact, and make one of those stupid Rare Spell x4 charged weapons for . Spearman D92-R (talk) 13:22, June 28, 2013 (UTC) * The speed of Flying Invisible Warships is somewhat dependent on whether you start with a coastal city, but I'd guess its average performance is quite good. Once Haste is researched (note that with 11 starting Sorcery books, it's guaranteed to be available), the Sky Drakes + X battle is clearly winnable without losses (maybe with a bit of "all units retreat exhausted"?), but I'm not sure what happens before that. * It's not particularly fast, but a large stack of Shadow Demons works well against Great Wyrms + X. Also, I'm pretty sure I've seen a Great Wyrm killed by Cracks Call before, so for some values of X, 1 Sprites unit + about 17 turns' worth of "all units retreat exhausted" gets the job done (let's suppose that you have enough spell skill to cast Cracks Call twice per battle, at least...). * Great Drakes are really kind of sad against spellcaster heroes; no uber equipment or xp needed (though they of course speed up the process). Actually, Chaos Nodes are kind of sad in general. Mind Stormy (talk) 13:52, June 28, 2013 (UTC) :Regarding Berserk Paladins, with 11 book the worst thing is that Paladins cannot attack flyers, the main problem, not their maneuverability. Berserk rocks versus high-end units anyway. Was thinking about suicide flying units with lots of figures or/and lots of attack. As I mentioned, Death Artificier+Runemaster can wipe out everything that is not mg im at the very start. Nature A+R with Web+Cracks Call can also work versus them Sky Drakes, but then Cracks Call is a thing to get. :By the way, Sprites I mentioned earlier are only used as cheap flying unit. You just web everything that flies and cast Call Lighting. Or you can summon Earth Elemental to unreachable tile; this is costly, but you won't need to waste mana on webbing enemy units, you simply attack with enough sprites to survive, summon the guy, and then cast Call Lighting. It's more efficient than chaotic-moving Magic Vortex, though. :Both Great Drakes and Great Wyrms are quite weak due to lack of Mag Im. Twilight Sparkle the Alicorn Princess (talk) 14:10, June 28, 2013 (UTC) I don't want to be a wet blanket, but let's be cautious about using Exploits except on the yet unwritten Exploit page. MysticX2 (talk) 07:43, June 29, 2013 (UTC) I'm curious, what type of treasure did this node generate? I can't think of any other encounter that could be considered more difficult, although I'm guessing that a Chaos node with Hydras and Drakes would be considered comparable. MysticX2 (talk) 08:54, July 1, 2013 (UTC) : I didn't bother to capture that node, but it's almost inconceivable that it would have anything other than two specials. Its garrison strength is somewhere between 8650 and 19,687 mana points. Treasure corresponds (2 specials = 3000 mana). There are other weird fights like that infamous nature combination (wyrms and giant spiders, where any visible unit is subject to immediate attack)... each of these battles, including the chaos one you pointed out, requires a very different set of advantages. Probably only Torin, Mortu, or Roland could just walk in and smack everything regardless. Spearman D92-R (talk) 16:45, September 22, 2013 (UTC)